Hey everyone, the names Luke and i've been a hobbyist composer/arranger/producer for a number of years now.

I recently signed up to composer cloud for the orchestral libraries that it offers and I must say that they sound great so far! I'm a big fan of the orchestra and love to hear one playing just about any genre or style of music. If i had to choose one use of an orchestra as my favourite though my preference would have to be video game sound tracks.

It would be ideal if someday I could take my hobby and passion for video game music and turn it into something profitable as well as enjoyable.

I have a fairly decent understanding of music theory behind me, but i could always learn much more. My one major downfall though (in my opinion at least) is that I can't really sight read at all. I just about know the very basics of what im looking at if i pick up a piece of music, but i couldn't play it live if my life depended on it!

With my new subscription in mind I plan to spend some quality time getting to know the orchestra better and how to write for it. I do have some understanding already based on my personal research of the individual instruments, their range, function and limitations etc... but there are still a lot of mysterious writing techniques that elude me. For example using runs effectively as FX and to create textures. I'm also beginning to get my head around creating a lot of movement between the color/character palettes within the orchestra, but I imagine that will come more easily over time.

Anyways thanks for reading, hopefully i'll meet some people that can teach me a thing or two and have some decent discussion on the orchestra with.

Welcome Luke. Don't sweat it about the ability to read music, Hans Zimmer and Paul McCartney can't read music either, and both seem to be doing just fine.

But if you want to educate yourself about music theory and orchestration, there are some really good facebook groups for that (Orchestration Online, Virtual Orchestration, and music theory; music engraving tips which is more geared towards music engraving and preparing parts for live players). I can also recommend googling Tim Davies, he's a wonderful orchestrator and very much in demand in Hollywood, for games as well, and his website (debreved) is a fountain of information.